General Victoriano Huerta, who had usurped the presidency in a coup d'état in February 1913, resigned the office in July 1914 on account of revolutionary pressures, and left the country.

He was replaced by Venustiano Carranza, who wished to discuss his government's policies with the other revolutionary leaders, and thus called for the convention to take place.

However, faced with the absence of the Zapatistas (who did not recognise Carranza's authority) and the refusal of Pancho Villa to attend a meeting in Mexico City, it was agreed to relocate the convention to Aguascalientes.

The convention was intended to settle the differences between the "big four" warlords who played the biggest roles in overthrowing Huerta: Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza and Álvaro Obregón.

There was some support for this idea in theory, but the revolutionary armies had formed and fought under the command of particular leaders (such as Villa, Obregón, Zapata and Abraham González) and so in the current circumstances it was impossible to implement.